Top of the World Elementary students Lela and Logan McCarroll kicked off TOW’s fourth annual Book Swap with their generous donation, carting three full suitcases to school.

Showing their support for reading, the students at TOW swapped over 2,000 books and donated an additional 1,000 books to the Laguna Beach Literacy Project. This year, the students focused on kindness through a school-wide program called Rachel’s Challenge. Rachel was killed at Colorado’s Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, but her acts of compassion become the foundation of a nation-wide program promoting kindness and understanding.

The book swap concept has also taken hold at Thurston Middle School, where over 1,500 books were swapped. At the conclusion of the Thurston swap, book swap organizer Mary Scifres gifted Top of the World with three boxes of books. The Friends of the Laguna Beach branch library also donated three boxes of chapter books to make sure that plenty of good reading material was on hand.

Local Girl Scout Troops #308 and #1440 sorted and organized books for the swap. Ari Fernandez and Caroline Sarkani of Troop #308 mended and cleaned over 100 books as part of their Bronze Award service project. As a result, Top of the World School was able to donate over 1,200 books to the Laguna Literacy Project at the Laguna Beach Boys and Girls Club.